Marta to the airport is best in the nation (Decatur: buses, train station)

[fourthwarden]

Originally Posted by magnetar

Weird. Will be interesting to see if they get brought back down to earth. Light rail certainly makes sense for local transit around north Fulton, just not as a replacement for the red line project.

I've never even driven to north Fulton though, I'll probably never go there on MARTA either. I don't think I can make myself care about what modality they choose to run with.

I get the feeling that this is a general consensus, minus those politicians, of course.

The backbone aught to be the GA 400 heavy rail. Any additional rail can be evaluated case by case, and could very well be Light Rail, but the Connect 400 line aught to be heavy rail to remove transfers, and provide a high-capacity, high-speed backbone to build off of.

[fourthwarden]

Originally Posted by cqholt

http://www.itsmarta.com/uploadedfile...rridor/hrt.pdf

Something else I just noticed about that alignment plan, is that it includes GDOT's planned toll lanes on GA 400, as well as a bunch of the interchange changes that go with it.

It's a twofer!

[primaltech]

Originally Posted by fourthwarden

Something else I just noticed about that alignment plan, is that it includes GDOT's planned toll lanes on GA 400, as well as a bunch of the interchange changes that go with it.

It's a twofer!

Yeah I noticed that, too.

So apparently, the plan is to run the lanes on the sides from Perimeter to just before Northridge, then in the median out to McGinnis Ferry. With the regular lanes having to be shifted outward to make room.

What a massive construction project. Or 2 massive projects, if they build the rail and the lanes.

Probably take 10 years to complete all of this. At least.

[MattCW]

Originally Posted by magnetar

*SNIP*

I've never even driven to north Fulton though, I'll probably never go there on MARTA either. I don't think I can make myself care about what modality they choose to run with.

You live in Reynoldstown, where do you work? Shop? Eat? I'd be willing to bet the answers for all of those are predominantly Atlanta. HRT means higher ridership than LRT, and both are higher ridership than nothing new at all. Every rider on one of those modes, is one less driver on the streets of Atlanta, the places you live, meaning higher quality of life for you. That's why we should ALL care. That's why the Cobb-Braves deal is such a big deal. That's why Cobb's transit decisions are important to us all, that's why Clayton's high capacity project is important to us all. We are a region, a body. The health of your leg may not be as "important" as your brain or your heart, but if you break it, your whole body suffers and has to adjust.

[fourthwarden]

Originally Posted by MattCW

Also, how do you get at that document from the MARTA site?

Originally Posted by fourthwarden

Well, where'd that come from? It's a pretty solid alignment doc.

Found it. It's in the Connect 400 projects page, under the 'Presentations' drop-down, named "Heavy Rail Transit Conceptual Alignment"

[magnetar]

Originally Posted by MattCW

You live in Reynoldstown, where do you work? Shop? Eat? I'd be willing to bet the answers for all of those are predominantly Atlanta.

I appreciate the sentiment here but the metaphor of a body doesn't really work. Maybe if I had a third arm I'd never seen, never used, and had no need for, it would be a decent analogy for north Fulton county to me. I 100% agree the Atlanta region needs a unified transit system but there's literally nothing I can do to change the minds of politicians way up there, so I'm going to focus my attention on the transit projects I actually need.

[cqholt]

Originally Posted by MattCW

Interesting. What I'm most intrigued with is the large numbers of crossovers and pocket tracks they'll have. After Northridge, there's a pocket and crossover, then a crossover before Holcomb. Then a pocket after Northpoint and a crossover before Old Milton, then a crossover before Windward. I'm not necessarily complaining, that's a tremendous amount of operational flexibility, but having so many pocket tracks is odd unless those are there just to support a phased development, in which case they could do three phases, Northridge, Northpoint, then Windward. One thing I'm not sure on is how they plan the Northpoint station. I was thinking it would be closer to Encore which would ease the pedestrian access. Do they plan to add a pedestrian bridge over 400?

Also, how do you get at that document from the MARTA site?

They don't call me the Mayor of MARTA for nothing . But I just wen to More/Projects/Project Overview/Planning Projects.

I like the idea of having more crossovers, in the event of a mechanical failure the single tracking around the issue would be a lot less of a headache than it is on the current trunk lines.

[cqholt]

Originally Posted by primaltech

Yeah I noticed that, too.

So apparently, the plan is to run the lanes on the sides from Perimeter to just before Northridge, then in the median out to McGinnis Ferry. With the regular lanes having to be shifted outward to make room.

What a massive construction project. Or 2 massive projects, if they build the rail and the lanes.

Probably take 10 years to complete all of this. At least.

Similar to Denver and RTD's T-REX project https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transp...ansion_Project and the original Red Line construction.

[arjay57]

Originally Posted by cqholt

Not shocking, MARTA, CoA, and HJIA were forward thinking in building the Airport Station at the Domestic Terminal before the actual rail every reached it.

We boomers did our best to set things up for the younger folk.

[J2rescue]

Originally Posted by arjay57

We boomers did our best to set things up for the younger folk.

You mean by sprawling all over North Georgia?